


A Year is a Long Time

by bottleofcasgrace



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/F, Mentions of canon character death, and symbionts, mostly just musings on trills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 17:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3418988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bottleofcasgrace/pseuds/bottleofcasgrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year is a long time, especially when it's the one year anniversary death of your lover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Year is a Long Time

**Author's Note:**

> From a writing prompt on tumblr by alloftheprompts, and because it's femslash february in the DS9 fandom and I thought it was terrible I hadn't written anything for that yet.

A year is a long time.

That’s what Kira thinks when she sits down to meditate one day, the overwhelming realization coming to her. A year.

Her hatred for Dukat has not lessened at all in the days and months that have passed, but she hated him before so it’s not a surprise. Kira doesn’t let go of things easily, not the occupation, not the death of her father, or of each and every person aboard the station since she took control. She carries that anger, lets it fuel her as she goes about her day, so she doesn’t always feel the emptiness that used to accompany those cold nights on Bajor, after they’d plotted their next move against the Cardassians. It’s gotten better, emptiness filled with friends and family, and home. Not that she’d ever thought that she’d find a _Cardassian_ station home. But six and a half years later it’s true. But there are things that have occurred here that she cannot, will not, let go of.

Jadzia was killed one year ago.

It still hurts.

That’s probably why she kept busy today, why this is the first time she has to catch her breath. There’s certainly enough going on with the Dominion War to keep her occupied. Deep Space Nine is right on the front, they’re always on alert, there’s enough paperwork for both the Federation and the Bajoran Provisional Government to drive her crazy on a good day, and she got caught up on it finally today.

She shakes her head, tries to clear her mind, open up to the prophets like she’d been taught as a small child, and yet her thoughts drift back to Jadzia. To Dax too, she supposes. You never found one without the other.

Somehow, in the way that brains only do, instead of shifting through memories, her brain fixates on Dax again, but the next Dax. Not her Dax. Ezri.

_“Odo, Nerys, Julian, it’s so good to see you! Worf, we need to talk.”_

Worf wasn’t the only one she’d needed to talk to. Kira had cornered her, still hurt and reeling after the realization that this was Dax’s new host. She’s tried to let it go, but Ezri, counselor’s training showing her too much into how Nerys might be feeling, could still tell. Still, they tried, not to rekindle what had been, but to create a friendship. It worked, to an extent, but every so often Ezri would say something that made Nerys look at her in surprise when she didn’t see the familiar smile, the long hair pinned back. The smile still glimmered behind her blue eyes. The same blue eyes. Then she would move, and it would be Ezri again.

She works hard to separate herself from Jadzia, and Kira works at it too, trying as hard as she can, but it’s difficult. Especially difficult when she starts to see the way Ezri looks at Julian. Julian’s grown up, older, wiser, not the eager idiot fresh out of the academy Kira had had to knock sense into so much during their first year, but it still doesn’t mean that Kira wants to see that look. That look that used to be aimed towards her.

Ezri apologizes about it one day, while they’re in a turbolift on their way to Ops, because they’ve become friends. She feels bad, and so does Kira, but what can she do? Ezri is not hers anymore, she’s not her Dax, just as Kira is not Ezri’s.

Ezri is not Jadzia.

And yet, when Ezri’s eyes turn to Julian, Kira can’t help the way her mind goes back to each night when she would map out Jadzia’s spots, one by one down her body, and how Jadzia would, in return, find her scars and kiss them better. Those moments of intimacy, shared only between the two, and yet now known by a third party, make her hardly able to bear it.

She can’t.

How can she deal with the fact that the very person who helped her through turmoil, who allowed her to grow, to get over her hate, is now inside another person, who does not love her in the same way? How can she deal with the fact that the person that took her from broken, to bonded, who helped her discover being a woman, could be gone, and yet still alive?

This, she thinks, is the reason that Trills are not to contact anyone from their previous hosts. It’s not just for the Trill’s sake, but their former partners as well.

Everything hurts.

She gives up meditating – perhaps today is just going to be one of those days – and starts getting ready for bed. A short sonic shower, and a change into some pajamas, a set Jadzia had helped her pick out as though she wasn’t thinking about her enough, and she climbs into bed. Tomorrow she has to face the day, go to ceremonies in the same place that Jadzia was killed, meet with Ezri and the other officers about the next step for the Dominion War, but tonight she allows herself the luxury to cry herself to sleep.


End file.
